Our Candidates Need Not be Loved

CALLER: Hi. I was just curious as to what you thought about John Boehner’s comments. I thought that maybe it happened this weekend, because I didn’t hear any news about it until just this past weekend. But apparently it was on June 30th he was at a fundraiser in Wheeling, West Virginia, and someone in the crowd asked him, “Can you make me love Mitt Romney?” And Boehner said, “No,” and then he went on to say that the only people who would vote for Romney would be like some friends, relatives, and fellow Mormons.

RUSH: Well, wait. He didn’t say the only people who would vote for —

CALLER: Well, yeah, he said some people that are going to vote —

RUSH: He said some people that are gonna vote for Romney are friends. And the fellow Mormons thing —

CALLER: That’s what I was really curious about.

RUSH: Yeah, I saw it. I saw it reported over the weekend. I guess Saturday is when I saw it. I kind of cocked my head, and I said, “What the hell’s that?”

CALLER: Yeah. I thought it sounded kind of snarky.

RUSH: Yeah, I’ve not talked to Boehner about Romney so I don’t know what he thinks.

CALLER: Well, do you think that that sort of comment coming from the Speaker of the House is helpful to Romney?

RUSH: No, but I don’t think it really matters all that much. Like you said, it hasn’t been widely reported. Members of my staff, who, like most people, they rely on me for everything they know, had not heard it, either.

CALLER: Yeah, I heard about it over the weekend.

RUSH: So more people are hearing about this now than heard about it over the weekend. (laughing)

CALLER: John Boehner probably wishes I hadn’t made this call.

RUSH: Yeah, here’s the quote. “Listen, we’re just politicians. I wasn’t elected to play God.” He [was responding to], “Can you make me love Mitt Romney?” He said, “No. Listen, we’re just politicians. I wasn’t elected to play God. The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney.” He said that Romney’s got “‘some friends, relatives, and fellow Mormons… some people that are going to vote for him,’ but suggested that at the end of the day, Republicans would be voting against President Obama rather than for Romney.” I’m gonna tell you something, you may not like the way he said it, but I said something similar last week when I said Governor Romney had better learn fast this election is not about him.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: And I mean that from an ego standpoint. I think what Boehner means, the world, the country’s not clamoring for Romney. They’re not. We gotta be honest. What they’re clamoring for is no more Obama, and that’s what has to be capitalized upon. Now, throw in the Mormon thing, must be something going on behind the scenes that we’re not privy to.

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RUSH: Okay, so John Boehner says that nobody’s gonna fall in love with Romney. Nobody’s clamoring for Romney. Well, the bottom line, nobody’s clamoring for John Boehner. But by the same token, did Wisconsin voters fall in love with Scott Walker? Stick with me on this. Walker has accomplished something profoundly great for the state of Wisconsin and potentially for this country, if it has legs. But are people in love with Scott Walker? No. Are people out there clamoring for Scott Walker to run for president? Not many. Some people may be.

I have a story here: “Unemployment Rate Dropped in Every State That Elected a Republican Governor in 2010.” There are 17 of them. The states are Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, South Dakota, Florida, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio. All elected Republican governors. All have unemployment rates dropping. I know, the media is what it is. Not focusing on this, making a story out of it. But the people that live in these states know it. And yet, does it indicate that a movement’s underway or is it just a coincidence?

See, I think it portends disaster for Obama. I think it portends disaster for the Democrats. But there’s no way of having that emotion or that idea shared because the media’s what it is. I’m not complaining. I’m trying to make a point here, how when Republicans are elected, good things genuinely happen. Not always, of course, I mean this $16 billion national debt, the Republicans spent their share of it. There’s no question about that whatsoever. But what is clearly obvious is that in order to reverse the direction this country is headed, Democrats have to lose in as many elections as possible. That’s what has to happen. And how do you bring this about?

My theory today is that the economy’s not that big a deal. The unemployment rate is not that big a rallying point as a campaign idea because it’s not that painful for the people who are unemployed. It’s not the way it used to be and so simply running for election on the economy, as the Republicans are doing, is not enough. It isn’t gonna get it done, particularly when Obama’s gonna be running the kind of campaign he has to run. He cannot run a positive campaign. Obama can’t run on anything positive. He has to totally destroy Romney. Obama’s task is to make people think that the reason things are bad now is because Republicans held power in the past, and it’s gonna get even worse if they get back in. That’s what the Republicans are up against. And they’re going to have to answer that.

People don’t have to fall in love with our candidates, and they don’t have to be media darlings in order to win, as has been demonstrated. They just have to be responsive and loyal to their own traditions and policies. They have to be confident and willing to fight for them. And at the same time, willing to tell the American people the truth about the circumstances we’re in now and why. That must happen. It has to be part of the campaign. In other words, being critical of the Obama administration, of Obama, must be a major element in the campaign.

We live in a different age. The country is transforming in ways that Obama really has nothing to do with. He’s responsible for enough of them. But there are other transformations taking place that he’s simply capitalizing on, taking advantage of, which is another thing that infuriates me. Because he’s willing to see, he’s willing to preside over the decline of this country, for whatever reason, whether he believes we deserve the decline or it’s his ticket to power. I don’t care what the reason is. All I know is he’s willing to do it. He sees a direct route to power in presiding over the decline of the country.

What bothers me is why the decline’s possible. What’s making it possible? Why are Americans so accepting of this decline? We have to admit that there are far many more of them than we’d like to admit. We don’t know if it’s majority yet. Indications are in past elections that it’s not, 2010 being the most recent one, and the Scott Walker election in Wisconsin. Indications are that the majority of Americans are not comfortable with decline. But an increasing number are, and they’re ordering their lives around that decline. They’re fashioning lifestyles based on that decline. In other words, they’re accepting it. And that bothers me as much as anything. It really does. I think that may be one of the most fundamental sources of my bad moods, is why are so many people accepting this? Because it leads to questions, what’s happened to the country?

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RUSH: We go to the Gainesville, Florida. This is Jerry. I’m glad you waited, Jerry. Great to have you here. Hello, sir.

CALLER: (garbled cell connection) Hi, Rush. Thank you for everything that you do. You know, you asked a question earlier. Why, with all of the polls that people are responding negative to the numbers in policies, is the popularity of Obama still there? And you’ve been answering that question all day long. What it is is that this majority of our votes don’t even think about the questions or the details until the poll-takers ask that specific question, and then they come up and they say, “Oh, yeah, well, here’s what I think about that.” But when they go to the voting booth, Rush, it’s a beauty contest. And they’re looking and they say, “Oh, this guy’s got charisma. He seems nice. He has a nice smile. He speaks well and the like,” and that’s the way they vote. So it’s a beauty contest in the voting booth, and no thought is given to the policies. And you’ve been answering that all day long.

RUSH: Well, I think that’s true for some people. The question remains: How many are we talking about? This is what we don’t know. Although, I maintain that we do know. We’ve got indications. Every election that has happened, every meaningful election that’s happened since Obama was elected has gone against Democrats. Now, forget health care and the Supreme Court. You look at the governors that have won; you look at the 2010 midterms. The vast majority of people oppose Obamacare and don’t want it.

I think we still have clear majorities with us on our side. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, that election was huge. And people forget the 2010 midterms. The Democrats got shellacked all the way down the ballot to local elections, dogcatcher and stuff. It was huge. And all that’s happened since then is things have gotten worse. But there’s no question there is an entitlement mentality that has gained a foothold in this country. Now, we used to call that childishness. We used to call the entitlement mentality “childish.”

The expectation that you should be given something, it was children who did that. Today it’s adults. They’ve been convinced it’s okay to be that way. There have been political leaders and educators that have convinced them it’s okay. And, in fact, in some because it’s horrible. And there’s no question that Obama is looked at as the Celebrity of the United States. But look, you talk about beauty contests. That’s just the reality of the television world now. There’s nothing we can do about that.

It’s just another one of those things that is, that has to be accommodated and has to be dealt with. I’ll never forget that one of the first sponsors on this program way, way back in 1988 was Verbal Advantage. You know what they sold? It was a technique for expanding your vocabulary. And the sales pitch was, “You can make yourself sound smarter than you really are if you learn to use the language.” Well, here’s Obama. Under what definition is the man “smart”? He’s wrong about everything!

Every policy has been destructive. If we take him at his word that he wants to create jobs and that he wants to grow the economy, then he’s dumb! Now, I maintain he doesn’t really want to accomplish all that, but just in the realm of this reality here. I’ve always maintained that we need a new definition for “smart.” But you can fool people into thinking you’re brilliant just by how you sound. Look at all the people who think Bush is an idiot. He’s an Harvard MBA, for crying out loud!

They don’t give those away and you can’t buy them. He’s a Harvard MBA. He’s not stupid. Everybody who’s met him will tell you that. How many people think he is just simply because of the way he spoke on camera? These are realities that have to be dealt with. And everybody wants leaders that appear to be smarter than they think of themselves, smarter than they are. But, no, no. I don’t think that we’re anywhere near the point of no return here. But we’re on the way.

We’re clearly headed in that direction. It’s gotta be turned back, and that’s the theme of the day. But as is the case with every problem, you have to be honest in defining it before you can solve it. You know, Scott Walker wasn’t a beauty contest. There is no way you can tell me that Scott Walker, that mayoral race (sic) was a beauty contest. That race was about pure substance. (interruption) Governor! Governor of Wisconsin. What did I say, mayor? Everybody knew what I meant. This is the kind of stuff that Media Matters does, Snerdley, focusing on that. That’s not a mistake. It’s a faux pas.

Everybody knew I was talking about the governor.

Anyway, that was not a beauty contest. Reagan was not a beauty contest. Those were substantive elections about policy. Obama was a beauty contest election because people had been convinced to be fed up with Bush and the Iraq War. Well, it wasn’t even a contest, of course. McCain didn’t even really run. Ah, don’t even mention that. If you go through these elections election by election, you can analyze ’em individually as they — as they should be. But not every election is won by the best-looking person or the smartest-sounding person or what have you.

These are traps that we fall into that end up limiting us in our choices, who we nominate, who we support. The Tea Party, they don’t care about any of that. Tea Party candidates, they haven’t won because of beauty contest characteristics in their elections. They’re winning because of policy. They’re winning because of substance. And that’s why all the substance of this race is gonna have to be put on the table, and the substance that needs to be put on the table is Obama and his failings. Obama and his shortcomings. Obama equals why we are in the condition that we’re in. It’s that simple. I appreciate the call nevertheless.